Night Owl Cards

  So, way back before my vacation started, more than three weeks ago now, I met Angus of Dawg Day Cards for lunch. He was passing through town on his way to a concert. I was one day away from vacation with a ton of crap to get done, but we made it work and settled into our usual Buffalo Wild Wings spot -- like literally the same table -- to talk sports card shop.   Angus showed up offering gifts, as he often does. We had a bit of a wait before our meals appeared so I dug into the cards right away.   Although the selection contained the usual baseball, I'd say the highlight were the music cards, particularly one music card set.   Music is my second-favorite card thing to collect after baseball. Yes, even more than football or anything else. I think I've made that obvious on this blog. Music rivals baseball for my main interest all the time. As an example, which I've mentioned prior, music dominates the videos I watch by A LOT.   It's my main reason for clicking ...

The late '70s sure was an odd time to issue a card set called "Rock Stars," but that's what Donruss did in 1979. By '79, punk and disco had risen and fallen, given birth to new wave in the middle there, and was sharing the radio airwaves with what was left of arena rock. You can see what a confusing world it was by the four groups that pre-baseball Donruss included here. Queen was still rock, but branching out into a little bit of everything. The Babys, considered the next wave of rock at the time, was actually pop rock. The Village People was a dance club novelty act. And by '79 your parents had stopped hating Kiss because the band was so mainstream it was on the verge of selling cereal on TV. In fact, Kiss put out a disco record that year. I know all this because I was 13 in 1979. This is what I grew up with. If Donruss wanted to be more accurate and relevant to the time period, it could have chosen a quartet of Led Zeppelin, Van Halen, Dire Straits ...